Text Size:
A|
A|
A
Email
Print |
 |
|
Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette CCAC President Stewart Sutin. Click photo for larger image. |
Community College of Allegheny County President Stewart Sutin arrived at Seattle's airport for a conference in September with a simple need -- a ride to his hotel.
A taxi would have cost about $40, each way, for the 14-mile trip. But instead of hailing a cab, he rented a car and drove it a total of 28 miles, billing the publicly funded college $457.43 -- including $125 to park for five nights at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
It's a modest sum in the overall accounting of a campus president's travels.
But it and other unexplained expenditures add up at a college so pressed financially that it had already cut course sections by 5 percent and hiked tuition 8 percent the year before Dr. Sutin traveled to Seattle.
A review of hundreds of travel records obtained in response to a Right to Know request shows that when it comes to Dr. Sutin and CCAC board members, standard and accepted practices to document and control expenses often do not apply.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found that:
Except for such expenses as in-room movies and spa bills, the college appears to pay bills as submitted by the trustees and the president, even if no explanations or receipts are attached.
Restaurant bills, large or small, need not state who or how many people dined at college expense, or why.
Dr. Sutin and the college did not fully respond to Post-Gazette inquiries about the car rental for the Association of Community College Trustees meeting in Seattle.
Nor did they address specific questions the newspaper had about some other trips, including one by Dr. Sutin to South Carolina last year.
Records indicate that CCAC paid for a Friday and Saturday hotel stay there and a $140 Saturday restaurant tab submitted without explanation -- all for a conference that did not start until Sunday afternoon. The records show he left Monday morning -- a day before the gathering adjourned.
CCAC spokeswoman Helen Kaiser said the expenses were approved by the college's internal auditor under board-approved policy that reimburses employees for reasonable expenses and pays actual expenses incurred by the president and trustees as they perform their duties.
"I can't comment on the very specific details of decisions that were made more than a year ago. They did go through the approval process," she said. "They were deemed to be in line."
|
 |
|
Martha Rial, Post-Gazette CCAC board Vice Chairman Bill Robinson took a personal sightseeing tour in Seattle and billed CCAC for the daylong excursion. Click photo for larger image. |
Ms. Kaiser said CCAC's board has authorized "a special analysis of college spending, recruiting, compensation and hiring practices by an independent auditing firm. The results of these findings will be made public when they are available."
That analysis was ordered after county officials, state legislators and the news media raised questions about CCAC spending and decision making.
Allegheny County Council President Rich Fitzgerald said he's troubled by some of the expenses, including the $457.43 bill for what appears to be a ride to and from the airport.
"It certainly raises a lot of questions. You'd hope people are spending the college's money the way they would spend their own money," he said. "That does not seem to be a very efficient way to travel."
Kevin Evanto, a spokesman for county Chief Executive Dan Onorato, said Mr. Onorato hopes the audit will examine whether policies including those for travel make sense and are being followed.
Colleges by their nature are travel-intensive enterprises, and Ms. Kaiser said conferences help the board, president and administrators "exchange ideas about innovative educational programs, work force development initiatives and fund-raising strategies."
Nevertheless, the lack of travel documentation for CCAC's higher-ups appears out of step with common accounting practices, including those used by the State System of Higher Education, the largest public university system in Pennsylvania.
Under state system rules, no expense gets paid for anyone -- including top executives, the chancellor or board members -- without a written explanation, officials said. Meal claims must include names of those dining at public expense, and actual restaurant receipts are required so the state system accountants can know whether alcohol, which is never a reimbursable expense, was purchased.
To rent a car, any state system employee or board member must document the financial advantage of doing so.
"We're a public entity. We have to be very careful how we spend those dollars," said James Dillon, vice chancellor for administration and finance.
Employers in general require that expense claims be accompanied by explanations. That's because reimbursements not shown to have a business purpose are personal income under Internal Revenue Service rules and must be reported as such, said Tom Ochsenschlager, vice president of taxation with the New York City-based American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
Sometimes, CCAC appears to ask too few questions to know what's being spent by their leaders.
In Seattle last year, board Vice Chairman Bill Robinson missed part of a conference so he could take a personal sightseeing tour, and he billed CCAC for the daylong excursion.
No one from the college seems to have questioned the $63.10 Gray Line of Seattle customer receipt listed as a "shuttle" on his expense report and dated a day after his arrival and two days before his departure from the Association of Community College Trustees conference.
Nor did anyone seem to balk when Mr. Robinson, after another ACCT conference in Denver in 2003, submitted an $84.01 meal tab for two at Sambuca Jazz Cafes without explaining with whom he dined or whether it involved college business.
During an ACCT conference in New Orleans in 2004, the school paid Mr. Robinson's $37.56 dining tab, $20 of which was for "liquor sales," according to the receipt.
Ms. Kaiser said CCAC does not pay for alcohol for its employees and discourages executives and trustees from expensing it, though she said exceptions can be made if it's clearly to advance the college.
In an interview, Mr. Robinson, a county councilman, said he could not recall specifics about the meals the college paid for but said CCAC should not have paid for his sightseeing tour.
He said he must have mistakenly thought it was a receipt for travel to the airport and submitted it as such. A $40 taxi trip from the Seattle airport the day he arrived was the only transportation receipt submitted other than that for the Gray Line tour.
"Someone internal to the process should have stopped that and gotten back to me," he said. "If that proves to be something I should have paid, then obviously I will reimburse the college."
Mr. Robinson added, "It's obvious that our internal procedures are not what they should be."
For the South Carolina trip in October, Dr. Sutin followed a roundabout itinerary.
Instead of flying into Charleston, site of the gathering, he flew to Myrtle Beach, nearly 100 miles away. He rented a car for $220.02 to drive to Charleston.
Dr. Sutin apparently spent little time in Myrtle Beach that Friday. His plane was scheduled for arrival at 1:23 p.m., and he was clocked entering a parking garage in Charleston at 3:58 p.m.
The conference brochure named only the Charleston airport, located about 13 miles from the gathering.
Dr. Sutin was there for a meeting of COMBASE -- Cooperative for the Advancement of Community-Based Post-Secondary Education -- that ran through 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, the end time of the last session.
Parking records, however, indicate Dr. Sutin, secretary-treasurer of the group, left the garage at 10:10 a.m. Monday. Records show he ordered lunch at the Myrtle Beach airport at 1:21 p.m. and his flight home was to leave at 3:30 p.m.
Minutes of the organization's 8 a.m. Tuesday assembly meeting noted the organization's executive director spoke "in Dr. Sutin's absence."
Other seemingly unquestioned bills appear in Dr. Sutin's travel reimbursements.
During his 2004 San Francisco trip to a conference of the League for Innovation in the Community College, Dr. Sutin's expense report includes two dinners -- one for 11 people at the Grand Cafe for $449.39 and the other for an unspecified number of diners at the North Beach Restaurant for $278.58.
Each receipt has "CCAC group dinner" handwritten on it, but neither lists the names of the diners.
Some other bills don't give even that much explanation, including a $235.05 charge on the college credit card at "McCormick's Fish #2," apparently a reference to the restaurant McCormick's Fish House & Bar in Seattle last year.
The amount appears on the college's credit card statement with the note "AACC conference," an organization (American Association of Community Colleges) that did not meet in Seattle that year. The transaction took place while Dr. Sutin and at least two trustees were at the ACCT conference in Seattle, but it does not appear on any of their expense reports.
According to a CCAC list, Dr. Sutin has taken 49 out-of-county trips during his three-year tenure, including 28 to other states. The trustees are listed as having taken 17 trips.
Over the past two months, CCAC has provided documents to the Post-Gazette with information on some expenses for about a dozen of the president's out-of-county trips as well as documents on trustee and other employee travel.
The newspaper has not been permitted to review any originals, even of records for which no personal information needed to be removed.
CCAC began making some copies available June 8, shortly after its board approved a policy calling for the college to follow the state Right to Know Act.
CCAC officials had maintained that the college, which receives more than half its funding from state and county government, was not a public agency. Its refusal to release its budget publicly in May prompted Mr. Onorato, however, to push the CCAC board to adhere to the provisions of the Right to Know Act.
Travel is a small portion of CCAC's $92.5 million budget, but it's been an area of concern. In November, Dr. Sutin ordered curbs on out-of-county travel -- including the number who can attend conferences -- to help narrow a budget deficit that contributed to job cuts last fall and spring.
Overall, administrative out-of-county travel has been declining, according to a CCAC report to the county last month. It totaled $198,923 in 2003-04 and $166,616 in 2004-05, and was estimated at $161,524 for 2005-06.
Some records show an effort by current and former board members to be frugal.
At least once, former trustee Ron Cowell paid his own expenses, except for the registration fee, to attend a conference.
George Fechter drove to Washington, D.C., in 2004 for a Community College National Legislative Summit. His expense report noted that he "stayed with friends to minimize CCAC expenses."
